Near-heatwave temperatures resuming this week serve as a reminder to keep an eye out to avoid the very worst of mistakes. It is estimated that nearly 40 children in the United States die each year from heatstroke, either because they were left or became trapped in a car. The number of car deaths for 2022 was 33.

According to recent reports, 19 deaths have been reported so far this year. Since 1998, nearly every state has experienced at least one death. More than 50% of hot car deaths happen because someone forgets a child in a car. Overall, 87% of the children who have died in a hot car are age 3 and younger and 54% are age one and younger. A full 32% (the largest age category) of fatalities involve infants.

You may ask yourself as I have very often: how does this possibly happen? Among the trends discovered over the years: about 46% of the time when a child was forgotten, the caregiver meant to drop the child off at a daycare or preschool; Thursdays and Fridays — the end of the workweek — have had the highest deaths; more than half of the deaths (54%) are children under 2 years old.

According to some psychologists, forgetting a child is not a negligence problem but rather a memory problem.The issue involves two parts of a person's working memory- prospective and semantic: prospective memory helps us remember to do something in the future, while semantic memory allows drivers to make the trip from work to home on "autopilot," whereby they arrive without remembering clear details of how they got there.

Prospective and semantic memories work together to help us make changes to our routines; these changes could include things such as "drop off the baby at day care" or "stop for groceries on the way home." When working memory fails, such as when we're distracted or stressed, there can be horrific implications. Examples of situations in which critical safety steps can be overlooked include a surgeon leaving tools in a patient, a pilot not setting the wing flaps for landing, and caregivers forgetting that there's a baby in the car.

What we call cognitive autopilot is generally convenient; we don't remember specifically taking every turn, but we get to our destination. The problem, again according to some psychologists, is that while guiding our behavior, this autopilot mechanism suppresses the other part of the brain that is supposed to remind us of additional information. Those who have studied many heatstroke cases point to common factors: stress, sleep deprivation, and change in routine as impacting working-memory failure. They explain that a parent drives to work as usual, and unless there was an external cue, such as seeing the diaper bag or hearing the baby, the parent's brain continues on autopilot and can even create a false memory that the child is safely at day care. The infant is riding rear-facing in the back seat, often asleep, there's a change of routine, a parent is sleep deprived, and as a result, you have the worst tragedy imaginable.

I must admit that I find some of this difficult to swallow. When I hear advertisements from various "safety councils" to leave one's cell phone in the back seat to help remember the baby back there, I am truly taken aback. So, we will remember the cell phone and will be motivated to look for it but actually need to do that in order to remember our babies? Is it that we are so programed to rely on our cell phones, and that looking for the phone falls within the autopilot rubric but remembering that we still have children in our cars before we exit from them does not?

I also struggle with what happens and how caregivers are treated after a tragedy occurs. I understand the difficulties around bringing criminal charges against the caregivers when children are found unattended in closed vehicles. If the child is deceased or severely injured or compromised as a result, we can all agree that the caregiver will suffer greatly. The grief is unimaginable. Sometimes that grief is punishment enough.

According to Kids 'N Cars, a group that advocates for legislation and public awareness campaigns regarding child-safety in automobiles, during the time period under review, of the 178 children who died of heat-related illnesses after being left in cars, criminal charges were filed in at least 65 cases, and of those, 26 ended in convictions. Based on a study done by The Des Moines Register, of 39 cases in which parents forgot their children in their cars and were not otherwise suspected of neglect, prosecutors and grand juries seemed to take a sympathetic view towards the grieving families as charges were filed in only 11 cases, and in one of those, the charge was eventually dismissed. In 23 cases no charges were filed, and in the others, charges were either still pending or the Register was unable to determine whether any action was taken.

I recognize that whether and what criminal charges are brought must be determined based on a variety of circumstances and that each case should be evaluated individually. Unfortunately, as with so many things, race has played a part in how the cases are treated. This is true around the country, and frankly, I saw this when I was DCF Commissioner. I recall the white professional parent whose child perished in a hot vehicle after 8-plus hours despite the fact that he had even returned to the vehicle in the interim and was allowed to plead to a misdemeanor while a parent of color who left her school age children in the car with open windows while she went for a job interview after her babysitter took ill faced felony charges. This type of disparity was very visible to me when I examined old DCF files of people now seeking to take custody of their grandchildren.

So, as we enter the fall, while temperatures in closed vehicles are still high, let's try engaging with our little ones during those car rides–try singing to an admirer who will love it no matter what you sound like; try practicing your oral argument before a live audience; try rehearsing your plea for a pay raise or a chat with a difficult client. You might even suggest the above to your clients and colleagues. And while I support whatever works to save a life, I just don't want to hear that you routinely use the location of your cell phone to remember your child.

Copyright 2023. ALM Global, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Originally published by Connecticut Law Tribune [https://www.law.com/ctlawtribune/2023/09/04/holiday-reminder-children-trapped-in-hot-cars-still-an-annual-problem/?
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